Davelt
Can a general resort president put items on each small community agenda within the resort legally, or should this be the small community president who decides with the owners?
No, he can't. Section 24 of the HPA regulates 'general resorts' or master communities formed by sub-communities and the last paragraph of its subsection (3) provides:
Duties of governing bodies of the association shall only cover common elements, roads, installations and facilities or services. Their decisions shall in no event diminish the powers of the governing bodies of the component sub-communities
This section 24 tries to cover a legal loophole for those macro-estates in which there are sub-communities integrated in a master community.
One may wish to create a master community in the following situation. Assume there are four blocks of flats around a garden. Each block of flats has its own unique maintenance and covenant issues, but all blocks want to share the common garden. Each block could be a separate community with maintenance obligations, voting and other rights pertaining just to that block. Only those in the affected block would get to vote on issues relating to that block. Each sub-community has its own service fees, its Owners’ Committee, its president and its own common elements but it is also belongs to a master community with general common elements.
Each sub-community has to contribute to the expense of the master community in accordance with the allocation established for this purpose in the title, thus, there are two types of allocations some in respect of each unit to its sub-community; and others of each community in respect of the master community.
The master community only has authority over general matters and general common elements not over affaires of each sub-community, conversely sub-communities cannot deal with business of the master community. For instance, Court of Appeal ruling in Lleida 14-12-2007 held that a sub-community is not entitled to claim for withdraw of an air conditioning unit placed in a common general area.
In order to protect the independence of sub- communities 24 (3) (b) states:
b) The adoption of resolutions for which the law prescribes qualified majorities shall require, in turn, a prior appropriate majority at the Owners’ Committee of each one of the sub-communities belonging to the association.
Can they insist that proxy votes are only handed into the administrator not the small community within the general resort community president not seeing them?
No, they can't. There is nothing like that in the law. Section 15 (1) of the HPA provides for proxy voting:
(1) Attendance at the owners' meeting shall be in person or by legal or voluntary representation, for which a writing signed by the owner is sufficient accreditation.
You are free to choose the proxy, even a non-owner could be proxy.
We are being asked to vote on the new method of calculating the fees and also on changing the voting percentage, does this need a majority vote, ? We have been paying this new fee calculation without a vote for two years?
New method of calculating fees could be passed by majority in some cases but changing the vote percentage requires unanimity because that supposes an amendment of the title and section 17 establishes:
Decisions of the Owners’ Committee shall be subject to the following rules:
(1) Unanimity shall only be required to ensure the validity of those decisions involving the approval or amendment of the rules provided in the commonhold community statement (Master deed) or in the Articles.
It seems to me that offices of your community are taking advantage of the owners' ignorance about commonhold law.